Table of Contents

CBS News/MTV/Gates Foundation Monthly Poll, March 2005 (ICPSR 4322)

Principal Investigator(s):CBS News; MTV; The Gates Foundation

Summary:

This special topic poll, conducted March 31-April 9, 2005, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. A national sample of 1,586 respondents aged 14 to 24 years was surveyed, including oversamples of African American youth, Hispanic youth, and 14- to 20-year olds. Despite being termed a monthly poll, the foci of this poll were the opinions and judgments of teenagers and young adults about va... (more info)

This special topic poll, conducted March 31-April 9, 2005, is part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. A national sample of 1,586 respondents aged 14 to 24 years was surveyed, including oversamples of African American youth, Hispanic youth, and 14- to 20-year olds. Despite being termed a monthly poll, the foci of this poll were the opinions and judgments of teenagers and young adults about various aspects of the education system and process in the United States. Views were sought on the most important problem facing young people, the highest level of education respondents hoped to achieve, the highest level they expected to actually achieve, and whether a college degree was necessary to "get ahead".
Respondents were asked about their plans after high school, the quality of their high school and its teachers and staff, whether their high school education was adequately preparing them for college and/or the job market, what measures respondents took or would like take to improve their chances of getting into the college of their choice, the importance of grade point averages and performance on standardized tests in getting into college, and their ability to get information about educational opportunities. Similar questions were asked of those respondents who were college students, regarding assistance received from college professors, the importance of internships, and whether college was adequately preparing them to get a well-paying job after graduation. Additional questions addressed MTV's involvement in issues concerning young people and how much impact MTV could have in raising awareness among young people about the importance of education. Demographic information includes age, race, sex, education, employment status, ethnicity, parents'
education, perceived social class, level of religious participation, religious preference, whether respondents considered themselves to be an evangelical or born-again Christian, and the presence of other household members between the ages of 14 and 24.

Universe:
Teen and young adult population of the United States aged
14 through 24 who have a telephone at home.

Data Types:
survey data

Data Collection Notes:

The data contain oversamples of African Americans, Hispanics, and 14- to 20-years olds, as identified in the OSMP variable.

Interviews were collected in both English and Spanish, as indicated in the variable HISP.

The CASEID variable was reformatted in order to make it a unique identifier.

Truncated value label in variables Q2, Q4, and Q5 were corrected.

This data collection was produced by CBS News, New York, NY.

Methodology

Sample:
A national sample of 1,586 respondents aged 14 to 24 years was surveyed. These respondents were part of nationwide representative samples identified in households previously interviewed by CBS News and from RDD samples drawn from targeted areas. The 262 African American respondents, 200 Hispanic respondents, and 1,200 respondents aged 14 to 20 years in this poll included an oversample to provide larger bases for analysis.

Weight:
The data contain weights that should be used for analysis. All oversampled groups were weighted to their proper proportion in the total sample.

Mode of Data Collection:
telephone interview

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Created online analysis version with question text.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:2006-09-19

Version History:

2010-04-27 Corrected the dates of collection, PI, and oversample information and releasing the full product suite including question text.